Podcast · 1 hour 12 minutes

Notion's lost years, its near collapse during Covid, staying small to move fast, the joy and suffering of building horizontal, more | Ivan Zhao (CEO and co-founder)

Ivan Zhao, hosted by Lenny Rachitsky · Lenny's Newsletter Free Intermediate

Ivan Zhao talks in detail about the years Notion nearly died, including a full technical rewrite after the first version failed, and how he thought about telling that story once the company took off. It is a rare, specific account of a founder who does not sand down the failure, he describes exactly what did not work and what they changed to fix it. Listen for how a founder narrates a near death relaunch with confidence rather than shame.

  • A public relaunch story is stronger when it names the specific technical or strategic reason for the first failure.
  • Staying small and slow during a rebuild can be a deliberate choice, not a weakness, if you frame it that way.
  • Founders who own the lost years openly gain more credibility than ones who skip past them.
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The question it answers

  1. I relaunched a product that failed the first time. How do I frame it so it doesn't look like I'm just recycling a flop?

Read with it

  1. The essay that put 'product-market fit' into the startup vocabulary. Read it for the gut-level description of what PMF feels... pmarchive.com Essay · ~15 min read The Only Thing That Matters Marc Andreessen
  2. The nuanced counterweight: PMF isn't a single binary moment, it can be lost, and 'market' is doing more work than founders... a16z.com Article · ~20 min read 12 Things About Product-Market Fit Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)
  3. The best book on positioning against competitors by understanding the alternatives customers actually consider. Directly turns... aprildunford.com Book · ~200 pages Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It April Dunford
  4. The origin text for the modern MVP and validated-learning vocabulary every founder now uses. Read it for the mental model that... theleanstartup.com Book · ~330 pages The Lean Startup Eric Ries
  5. The single most reassuring and clarifying essay for a founder on the edge of quitting, Graham's core insight that startups die... paulgraham.com Article · short How Not to Die Paul Graham
  6. The definitive, brutally honest account of 'The Struggle', the emotional and operational reality of running a company when... HarperBusiness Book · long The Hard Thing About Hard Things Ben Horowitz
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